title: The incorporation of specific tissue/nuclide attenuation data into the Anderson method for producing brachytherapy volume-dose histograms.
abstract: Anderson has proposed an analytical method for deriving volume-dose histograms relating to three-dimensional brachytherapy distributions. Because the mathematical transformation allows the otherwise dominant effects of the inverse-square fall-off about individual sources to be effectively suppressed, the resulting histograms provide the potential for visually and numerically assessing the overall quality of a brachytherapy treatment. In this paper the Anderson equations have been combined with the radial-dose polynomials of Dale, which are applicable to a number of tissue/nuclide combinations, and the predictions of the combined formalism have been used to further investigate the physical aspects of brachytherapy dosimetry. The problems associated with the dosimetry of low-energy gamma-emitters such as 125I are once again highlighted, as are the potential advantages of using a radionuclide with an intermediate gamma-ray energy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Physics, Charing Cross Hospital, London, UK.
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Loft
authors.forename: R G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Dale
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D001918:Brachytherapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005720:Gamma Rays; D006801:Humans; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage